Mejhiren Drops a New Chapter of “When the Moon Fell In Love With the Sun”

Take out the names Katniss and Peeta and this could be anything: a fairy tale that adheres to its magical conventions but has such a complexity of description and symbol that it seems to be operating on a level that is completely meta. Maybe this is a hallucination: there is no large wooden house by a lake, there is no lone victor who dresses himself in bearskin when he comes to fetch Katniss from her childhood home and brings her to his house as a servant. It’s all a dream. It’s like Memento, all jagged pieces. It’s about fragmentation. Literally.

The author updates about once a year.

Yes.

Every year we have a chapter that tells us what happens when Katniss wakes up each morning: the mysterious companion of her night-time disappears. She doesn’t know if it’s Peeta or someone else. If it’s Peeta, why the heck doesn’t he just tell Katniss, Yes it’s me that comes and sleeps next to you every night? For the reader it’s been five years (Admittedly, in the story it’s only five nights, but anyhoo) of tension, confusion and speculation. (Who is Mejhiren? She has a tumblr called Porchwood. That’s all self knows)

If this is serialization, it’s also torture. All the author is willing to give are crumbs, carefully doled out. You must be a masochist.

Yes, yes, self will admit, she is a masochist. So are hundreds of thousands of other fan fiction enthusiasts. We’re all masochists, we all exist in a state of suspended animation. Thank you, Mejhiren, for updating right after the news broke of George Michael’s death.

Anyhoo, this chapter begins with Katniss waking up in bed alone (naturally). Nothing is different. She keeps trying to piece together clues. And this morning there is a new one: a feather.

What does this mean?

Scooting out of bed, I press a kiss to the feather and tuck it away in my drawer of precious things alongside the wintergreen sprig and the orange, which I decide to split with my companion tonight, peel and all. Perhaps my visitor is a bird himself, I think, a little madly, wooed by my newfound gentleness in the woods, and the feather is his own. Oranges are very precious, of course, but many birds love fruit, peels and rinds and all, and I resolve to ask Peeta if he’s found one that prefers oranges yet. There’s no doubt in my mind that he’s tried it already.

“We’d make a fine pair,” I tell my absent companion as I collect the nest from his pillow and carry it to my dresser-top to await this evening’s treat.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.

from Dutch Warlord: Hunger Games/Battlestar Galactica Mash-Up

Six months after the destruction of the Twelve Districts, Viper pilot Peeta Mellark is training several rookies when they are ambushed by an enemy fighter patrol. Ordering the recruits to retreat, he engages the enemy patrol alone and destroys most of them but not before suffering critical damage to his own fighter and being dragged into a nearby moon’s gravity well.

DUN DUN DUN!

Stay tuned.

Love in the 21st Century

Everlark fan fiction, be warned.

(The words are from a story self stumbled on this afternoon. Pretty clever stuff!)

Prof. Katniss Everdeen and Prof. Peeta Mellark are rivals for the same big, fat national research grant (Like the MacArthur? Only big and fat? And not for “geniuses”?)

They send each other “challenge” messages.

TO:  Everdeen, K.

A newcomer like you to the field of Panem History has no hope of winning it. I’m only sending you this note to save you time and potential future humiliation.

TO: Mellark, P.

If I were you, I would worry less about any potential humiliation I might face and more about covering your own ass.

P.S. I’m not a Miss. I’m a professor, with a doctorate in the history of Appalachia.

TO: Everdeen, K.

They still talk about my dissertation at Harvard.

TO: Mellark, P.

If you need tutoring help I’m available Tuesdays between 3 and 5 p.m.

TO: Everdeen, K.

Friendly advice: coming out of the gate too strong is a bad idea in teaching. You’ll tire yourself out before fall break is even here.

P.S. I wrestled in college, just so you know.

TO: Mellark, P.

Your observation RE: tiring myself out is timely, given that I’m running the Chicago marathon this weekend. My bib # is 1213.

TO: Everdeen, K.

I watched part of the Chicago Marathon on television this weekend but I didn’t see you because I don’t know what you look like. You have a ridiculously small online footprint, Professor. You know this is the 21st century, right?

P.S. We totally kicked your asses in football last Saturday.

Stay tuned.

 

Peeta and Johanna Mind-Swap (Fan Fic Of Course)

Do not read if you are squeamish at the thought of a Peeta/Katniss reunion, only with Peeta in Johanna’s body. Hey, if self can buy a tranny Peeta (who borrows Katniss’s clothes; it’s super-fine with Katniss), there can be a Peeta-in-Johanna’s body thing.

So, if you can, just imagine the whole “star-crossed lovers” plot with a body switch, then you will empathize with the below complications:

• Johanna insists on taking her D-13 shower with the men.
• Peeta can’t get used to having such small feet (They’re Johanna’s) and keeps stumbling.
• Peeta to Katniss: “Having boobs is pretty weird.”
• Katniss doesn’t feel comfortable kissing Peeta because he’s in Johanna’s body.
• When Peeta is rescued, Katniss goes straight for him and hugs him fervently, not knowing that Peeta is now in Johnna and it’s now Johanna in Peeta. Katniss gets very confused when Peeta (who is actually Johanna now) just stands there without returning her embrace.
• Gale doesn’t get jealous of all the time Katniss spends hanging out with Johanna, because he doesn’t know that it’s really Peeta inside Johanna’s body.
• Plutarch asks Peeta to appear in a propo, Peeta just stands there looking bored (Of course Plutarch has no clue that Johanna is inside Peeta, and so forth. Self doesn’t know if she quite buys the Johanna-looking-bored-while-filming-a-propo thing. In self’s mind, a propo would be a perfect opportunity for Johanna to show off her antic nature)

Well, self could just go on and on and on and on and on, but she won’t.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.

 

Synth: Cyborg Katniss, Scientist Peeta

KTNS-12 was born in a gestation chamber, created by the brilliant scientist Beetee Lateer and his assistant Peeta.

And this fiction is so beautiful:

Beetee straightens, and I can hear his back pop from all the way across the room. “He used to insist on sleeping beside the gestation chamber to keep an eye on your vitals during the night. He was irrationally worried that something would go wrong and no one would be there to stop it. Of course, the alarms would have brought us all in within seconds, but I never could convince him of that . . . ” He trails off, going silent for so long I think he’s done speaking, but then he says, “FXFC and LVNA-9 both died within six in the evening and six in the morning. He blamed himself for not being there when it happened, I think, so he wouldn’t take any chances the third time around.”

Self’s only question is: Cyborgs are bred to go into battle, is there any point in having them all be female?

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.

Gale or Peeta: Who Is a Better Dystopian Boyfriend?

This is a matter of grave import, dear blog readers, for the last Hunger Games movie (Mockingjay, Part 2) is coming out in November, and the fandom is just about to burst.

That now-familiar trope, the Dystopian Boyfriend, is going to have such a field day.

Dear blog readers already know where self lies on this gradient.

This discussion has to do with the movie version of The Hunger Games, not the books! For you lame ones who have never seen a Hunger Games movie, Gale Hawthorne is played by Liam Hemsworth, and Peeta Mellark is played by Josh Hutcherson.

Going in to movie # 1, self had no love for J-Hutch, as she’d only seen him in The Kids Are All Right and he struck her as — all right but he definitely was not her first choice for actor to play Peeta (Her all-time favorite HG character) Now, four years later, after reading the entire trilogy, watching 3 movies, and becoming a fan fiction writer of Everlark (??? Can you believe it ???), self is all like, WHO IS LIAM? WHO IS GALE? There can only be ONE Dystopian Boyfriend! Don’t even mention! Self can’t even!

Let the Decider.com analysis begin! (Ummm, the discussants are both men. Nevertheless. Posted March, 2015)

P.S. It is Friday. Please feel free to be super self-indulgent. No trigger warnings. Definitely the PG version.

Excerpts of choice:

1. Pro-Liam: The chiseled Hemsworth jaw. The woodsy hunter look. The delicate, elderly aunt’s name. (Self didn’t know that Gale was an aunt’s name? Does Collins say this in the books?)
2. Pro-Josh: I could probably carry him around on trips with a little Glad container of hummus.
3. Pro-Liam: “Hey, babe, calm down. No one is thinking about this nearly as hard as you are. Let’s go hunting.”
4. Pro-Josh: I’m very attracted to tiny boxes of feelings that are likely to explode like a pressure cooker.
5. Pro-Liam: Peeta would come back after the seventh time I fake-break up with him, while Gale would call my bluff . . .
6. Pro-Josh: I’m gonna snatch it/him right up! And then carry him around on my back, like a human Yoda.

Had enough, dear blog readers?

A long, loooong time ago, when self was still having meaningful discussions with Niece Georgina (who was at Stanford), she declared herself unable to see the attraction in J-Hutch and Georgina said “No. It’s Josh. Definitely. Hotter.”

And the rest is history.

How self could ever have considered Liam Hemsworth anything more than a limp dishrag when contrasted with the all-over hotness of J-Hutch (His miniscule height strangely adds, rather than detracts, from the appeal — people, don’t ask self to explain, it just IS) is simply confounding.

Self is also still reading Howard Jacobson’s hilarious and heartbreaking novel, The Act of Love (Set in London, today. His main character spends a lot of time on Great Russell Street)

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.